Night in the city /

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

An ingenious account of the jobs people do all through the night, when kids are fast asleep.

In Night in the City , author and illustrator Julie Downing cleverly uses multiple panels to follow eight people throughout the course of their busy evening, from waking up just as most people are contemplating bedtime, through the following morning.

The jobs depicted are nurse, baker, taxi driver, fire fighter, on location film tech, janitor, museum security guard, and emergency dispatcher.

Together, their stories bring the beating heart of a city to life, making for a book sure to have kids pouring over meticulously designed pages, following the exploits of our lead characters over the course of a single ordinary evening.


A Chicago Public Library 'Best of the Best' Book
A Horn Book Fanfare Book
A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

In a series of lively, inventive spreads, Downing (Cubs in the Tub) pays homage to workers who take up their posts as much of a city heads for bed, drawing building cutaways of people preparing to venture out. "One person puts on extra layers to stay warm," reads descriptive text, accompanying the image of a figure struggling into red long underwear. First touching on uniforms and transportation, lines next reveal an array of jobs. A baker "mixes flour and yeast for tomorrow's bread." Taxi drivers pick up late fares. A nurse looks on as a father kisses a new baby. Addressing the story directly to readers, she highlights the way the diverse workers' time is turned upside down: "When it is the middle of the night and you need to get up, some people are sitting down to eat." Warm, engaging artwork plays the dark indigo of night off warm, golden interior light. Combining the gravitas of Keeping the City Going with the straightforward charm of The Philharmonic Gets Dressed, Downing offers a gently bustling account of how "all night long, people are awake." Ages 4--8. Agent: Rosemary Stimola, Stimola Literary. (Mar.)

Booklist Review

At nightfall in the city, when children are getting ready to sleep, some grown-ups are preparing to leave for work. They lace their boots, put on their name tags, and say goodbye to their families and pets. Some workers drive taxis, while others have jobs in bakeries, hospitals, or hotels. During an emergency, a dispatcher tells the police and fire fighters where to go next. At the museum, a security guard and a janitor are working all night. But at dawn, the workers put on their jackets and head for home, where their neighbors and their families are just waking up. A quiet text leads viewers through this picture book, but it's the art that is most memorable. Children who are fond of seek-and-find books will particularly enjoy exploring the intricate pictures to find particular characters in different scenes. Created using watercolors, colored pencils, and "digital touches," Downing's illustrations show a sure sense of figure drawing and composition as well as an uncommon sensitivity in using color combinations effectively. A beautiful introduction to the city at night.

Horn Book Review

While a child gets ready for bed, a father gets ready for work -- as do other night-shift workers in the city. Readers follow the dad (a nurse) and eight others: a taxi driver, a firefighter, an emergency dispatcher, a janitor, a security guard, a hotel manager, an on-location film tech, and a baker. Spreads with multiple panels or apartment windows highlight people at home and at work; in busier scenes the colorfully depicted main characters easily stand out. Nifty details are everywhere, and crisscrossing narratives add tons of fun. Wisely, the quiet text lets the pictures tell the stories, allowing viewers to discover the connections on their own: the hotel manager welcomes a guest whose dog gets loose and runs down the street to the bakery, where firefighters (alerted by the dispatcher) have just put out a fire; an expecting couple hails the taxi driver, and later the nurse tends to new mother and baby, while outside their hospital window the baker holds the lost dog and hails the cab driver, who takes the pup back to its owner, an actor who's on a set with the film tech. Phew! Fittingly, the work-night wraps up with a scene outside the cozy bakery, where each worker, before heading home, can be spotted inside or out. The characters' diversity nicely reflects the big-city setting: the nurse is a Black man, the firefighter is a woman, the dispatcher uses a wheelchair, and the hotel manager wears a hijab. Jennifer M. BrabanderMarch/April 2023 p.46 (c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Kirkus Book Review

From a nurse to an emergency dispatcher, a look at the city dwellers whose work begins when the sun goes down. Reading this book is like looking through a telescope--there are windows on nearly every page; some pages feature rectangular, windowlike vignettes of people at work. On the front cover, a taxi driver is visible through the side window of a cab, with a dog sitting up in the back seat. Above them, on an upper floor, a museum worker is doing some vacuuming, with dinosaur bones in the background. Many of the people can be seen only from a great distance, and the details we learn about them often come from just a few spare sentences: "The museum is closed, but the janitor and security guard are hard at work." Downing's blue-tinged, cozy artwork sometimes makes words almost unnecessary--in this case, the accompanying illustration says it all, a full spread showing the janitor reaching up to dust the nose of a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton. Most of the people who are working late seem to be smiling, and while it's difficult to find a message in the limited text, readers will close the book feeling that there's joy to be found in every job and every schedule. The residents of this urban environment are diverse in skin tone. (This book was reviewed digitally.) Will make readers fall in love with the city depicted within. (Picture book. 3-5) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Julie Downing has illustrated over forty-five picture books including Hello Moon, Cubs in the Tub- The True Story of the Bronx Zoo's First Woman Zookeeper by Candace Fleming, The Fire Keeper's Son, Tessa Takes Wing and First Mothers. She has won many awards including a Parents Choice Award, the New York Public Library's Best Books Award, APAAL Best Illustrated Book and the Irma Black Silver Medal. Her work has been featured in the SCBWI Original Art Show. Julie teaches illustration to undergraduate and graduate students at the Academy of Art University. She lives in San Francisco.